Pastoral Notes for Sunday, January 10, 2021

Dear Cornerstone Family,

It’s been argued that no word picture in the whole of Scripture better encapsulates God’s redemptive mission than that of a shepherd. Let me show you why.

Remember Abel in Genesis 4? He is the first shepherd mentioned in Scripture. We don’t know much about him, but we know what’s important: he was the first person recorded in the Bible to bring a pleasing sacrifice to God (Genesis 4:4). Hmm, a shepherd that brings a pleasing sacrifice to God...does that sound familiar?

In Exodus, we’re introduced to another shepherd, Moses. He was tending Jethro’s flock on Mount Horeb when an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a burning bush, calling him to shepherd God’s people out of bondage in Egypt (Exodus 3). Hmm, a shepherd who frees God’s people from bondage...does that sound familiar?

Later, God sends Samuel to Jesse’s home to anoint the next king of Israel (1 Samuel 16). Jesse’s sons come before Samuel, and one by one they are rejected. Finally, Samuel asks, “Is this all your sons?” Jesse responds, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping sheep.” Well, by now you know—he’s the one! The shepherd boy, David, becomes the next and greatest king of Israel. Hmm, a shepherd king who loves and leads God’s people...does that sound familiar?

Yes, all this background and more leads us to Jesus’s statement in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd.” Like Abel, but better than Abel, Jesus offers himself as a pleasing sacrifice to God on our behalf. Like Moses, but better than Moses, Jesus leads us out of the bondage of sin and into the freedom of salvation. Like David, but better than David, Jesus rules over us with truth and grace and secures us a home with Him in the New Heavens and the New Earth.

It makes sense, then, why Peter would employ the language of shepherd to speak of the role of elders and deacons. Though it’s clear that church officers are mere men, their relationship to the flock is to be conducted under and patterned after the Chief Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. From the beginning, Cornerstone has sought to be a church that cares for its members through an active shepherding ministry. Upon membership, each family unit is assigned a shepherding elder and deacon. The shepherds are tasked with the responsibility to care for both the spiritual and physical needs of those under their care.

As you’ll probably recall, we brought on three new elders and six new deacons in the fall of 2020. In order to incorporate these brothers into the work of shepherding, new elder and deacon teams were formed and a redraft of the whole congregation was conducted in November. If you’re a member of Cornerstone, you’ve received an email (and maybe a phone call, too) from your new elder and deacon shepherds in the last few weeks. Over the next year, it is our earnest hope and plan to be in regular (at least quarterly) touch with every member of Cornerstone. When your shepherd reaches out in the future, please know they do so in love for you! They genuinely want to know how you’re doing, how they can pray for you, and if we can serve you in any way.

Though we will strive to be faithful in our shepherding, we will undoubtedly fall short. (Please remember that your shepherds are sheep, too!) We ask for your grace and patience as we stumble forward in this work. Pray that in the year to come our shepherding would increasingly be reflective of the Good Shepherd’s never-failing care of us.

Your servant,

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Pastoral Notes for Sunday, January 3, 2021

Dear Cornerstone Family,

Sometime after Christmas, but before New Year’s Day, I pull out the album Recovering the Satellites (1996) by the American alternative band, The Counting Crows, and listen to their smash hit, “A Long December.” Given the year we’ve had, I found myself resonating with the opening line of the song more than ever:

“A long December and there’s reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last.”

In looking to the year ahead, the lyrics express both hope and reticence at the same time. The writer recognizes that there’s reason to believe things could be headed in an upward trajectory, but there’s enough uncertainty and question that he’s not yet ready to bank on it. “Maybe this year will be better.” Maybe not. Who can say for sure?

As Christians, our hope for the future is more certain than, “Maybe this year will be better.” As we looked at last week from Psalm 11, we know the end of the story. All who are upright in heart will behold the face of God (1 John 3:2). Our destiny is face-to-face, never ending fellowship with God in perfect love and holiness. Now, ponder this: no matter what happens in 2021 that future is ours in Christ Jesus right now.

Read that sentence again. Did you catch that? That future is ours now! Yes, I know we’re still waiting for that future, and we don’t know how long it will be until Christ returns and the fullness of the kingdom comes. But I’m telling you that by faith, you can lay hold of that future today. And when you do, that future becomes to you a present reality.

As I write that sentence, I’m experiencing that very reality. My heart wants to jump out of my chest with hope! I’m sensing the solid joys and lasting pleasures of my eternal future in Christ even now as I write this. It’s as if I’m standing in that eternal future now, experiencing the joy and peace that Christ has won for me.

Friends, this is what the life of faith looks like. Notice, I said the life of faith. Faith is not mere knowledge or feeling or action, though it incorporates all those things. Faith is a principle of life at work inside the true believer. It is, as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, a new birth that produces a new life empowered by the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:25).

As we gather for worship on the first Sunday of 2021, let’s reject reluctancy born of worldly hopes– “Maybe this year will be better.” Instead, let’s set our hopes higher—to the certain future of a new heavens and a new earth, where every tear is wiped away, and every joy and lasting pleasure are secured, and each day is better than the one before. Yes! Let’s let that future lead the way in 2021... and always.

Grace & Peace,

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Pastoral Notes for Sunday, December 27, 2020

Dear Cornerstone Family,

The beginning of a new year is often a time for transition. Whether starting new jobs, or moving to new places, or just turning over a new leaf, the shift from one year to the next is a natural time to make changes. As 2020 fades and 2021 begins, I want to inform you of several pending transitions in the church staff and leadership.

First, our Female Youth Intern, Eva Lewis, is stepping down from her position on staff on December 31st. Eva has served our junior high girls faithfully this past year. She has led small groups, met one-on-one for discipleship, organized numerous fellowships, and helped out supportively in countless ways. We are grateful for the spiritual investment Eva has made in the lives of our youth! By stepping down from her intern role, Eva will free up the time she needs to finish her studies at New College Franklin this Spring. Thankfully, Eva is not going anywhere right away. She will continue to worship at Cornerstone and volunteer in our youth ministry until the end of the school year.

Second, after six years of service as a ruling elder, Jim Payne will be taking a yearlong sabbatical starting January 1, 2021. Jim has served us faithfully as a shepherding elder. He started our prayer ministry from scratch (with much help from faithful prayer warriors across this congregation). He’s also served as head of our missions committee, helping evaluate and approve our various mission supports—campus ministries, church plants, and foreign missionaries. As you can see, this sabbatical is past due and much deserved! We will most certainly miss Jim’s wit and wisdom on the session and his loving care as a shepherd of the congregation, but we’re grateful he’s taking this year to rest and recharge for the work of ministry.

Finally, we’re deeply saddened to say goodbye to Terry and Barbara Cheney. From day one of Cornerstone, the Cheneys have been present with an all-hands-on-deck attitude. Barbara has taught women’s Bible studies and mentored women—old and young—throughout our congregation. Terry and Barbara both have a heart for struggling marriages, and have given sacrificially of their time and wisdom to counsel and disciple couples in how the gospel transforms marriages. On the session, Terry was always a dependable servant of the Master. His workman spirit revealed a heart committed to the duty of an elder shepherd, which added much needed ballast to our leadership core. Needless to say, he will be sorely missed. In case you’re wondering, God has called them to a mission field closer to family in sunny Florida. It’s a quick transition—today is their final Sunday with us! We will honor God’s work through them today in worship and send them off with a prayer of blessing.

Speaking of prayer, take a moment today to remember Eva, Jim & Becky, and Terry & Barbara before the Lord. While you’re at it, pray for Cornerstone generally. 2021 is a milestone year for us. Though I can hardly believe it, we are beginning our 10th year of ministry! As we close in on a decade of ministry, there’s so, so much to be thankful for, and yet so much I still long for God to do. Will you join me in praying that this next year will be the most fruitful and faithful year of Cornerstone’s ministry to date? By God’s grace, may it be so.

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Pastoral Notes for Sunday, December 20, 2020

Dear Cornerstone Family,

Every Advent about this time, I pull together a few quotes from my Yuletide reading to share. This year, sadly, my seasonal reading was cut short by research for upcoming articles, conferences, and classes. Even with that, I sneaked in a bookish exploration or two, running wild in grand mystery of the incarnation. Below are a few jewels from my treasure hunts, as we draw the waiting season of Advent to a close and prepare for the festivity of Christmas.

“Maybe Christmas” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”—Dr. Seuss

“Christmas says there is a cosmic scheme of things. God made us as his image to reflect his glory. We have sinned and fallen short of that glory (Romans 3:23). But the Son of God, who is the very image of God (Colossians 1:15), was sent by God, and came in love to restore his image. Through faith in him, we discover that our lives fit into the ‘cosmic scheme of things.’ He recreates in us a love for himself and restores us to fellowship with himself, which transforms self-directed love into love of our neighbors. That is the destiny for which we were created.”—Sinclair Ferguson

On this day of thine own Nativity;

Show thyself the Prince of Peace;

Bid our jarring conflicts cease.”—Charles Wesley

“In the Christian story, God descends to reascend. He comes down; down the from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity... down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift; he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.”—C.S. Lewis“

"There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the incarnation.”—Madeline Engle

“We have nearly arrived at the great merry-making season of the year. On Christmas day we shall find all England enjoying themselves with all the good cheer which they can afford. Servants of God, you who have the largest share in the person of him who was born at Bethlehem, I invite you to the best of all Christmas fare—to nobler food than makes the table groan—bread from heaven, for your spirit. Behold, how rich and how abundant are the provisions which God has made for the high festival which he would have his servants keep, not now and then, but all the days of their lives.”—C.H. Spurgeon,

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Pastoral Notes for Sunday, December 13, 2020

I asked Martha Brooks, co-leader of our Women’s Ministry, to write this week’s Pastoral Notes.

Ever since our girls were born, they have spent one day a week at my parents’ house. This sacred day gave me a break from diapers and chicken nuggets and gave the girls a day with someone much kinder than I who was delighted to change the Barbie doll’s dress for the one hundredth time. Even now, when it isn’t basketball/track/school play season, Mom picks them up from school once a week, and she brings out the good snacks, and basically does anything they want for three hours until Preston picks them up and forces them to come back to our house “because that’s where WE live!”

We have always referred to this day as “Grandma Day” even though my Dad has been there most of the time as well. And while he may not have always gotten in on the princess tea parties (although “The King” was known to make an appearance every now and again) he has his own special things he does with the girls. One of those things involves heading out, beginning in early January, walking or piled into the golf cart, and looking for signs of Spring—buds, patches of green grass, the beginnings of a nest. Dad is an outdoor kind of guy, and he is of the school that thinks snow is awful, ice is worse, and 95 degrees is just about right. When the girls were little and would spot those first signs of Spring, usually crocuses and buttercups, Dad’s excitement about the hope of warmer days sure to come would spill over onto them, and they would return home declaring the time had come to get out our bathing suits because Grandpa says it’s almost Spring! Well, no, I’d explain, it’s below freezing and here’s your puffy coat and hat and hurry up and stuff your hands into these mittens. (Parenting tip: Don’t try to put gloves on little kids. They cannot do it. Can. Not. Mittens are your friends.) But yes, Spring will come. That’s a promise. You can hang your bathing-suit-hopes on it.

I don’t know if we’ve ever collectively had a time when we’ve needed something to hang our hopes on more than after 2020. In many ways, for many people, it’s been a year fraught with hopelessness. A year full of cancellations, disappointments, uncertainty, and loss at every turn. Time and again Preston and I have answered our daughters’ many questions, “We don’t know. We just don’t know.”

The thing we keep coming back to is this: we trust Scripture. We are sure of that. Let’s go to Scripture. Let’s take our disappointments and our lost hopes, and let’s see what the Lord says about them. And every time we open the Word and listen to God speaking—listen to His promises—it’s like the hope of those first crocus buds that promise Spring: “I will... I did... I am... I came... I am coming...”

And there hangs our hope.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the kindness of God to leave us His Word. To leave us these buds of hope. And while there is so much value in sitting down every day and simply reading Scripture, there is also much value in studying Scripture in a community of believers—wrestling together, noticing things we never did before, discovering the magnificent truths that are our certain future. To that end, the Women’s Ministry is offering multiple Bible study times beginning in January, all working through selected Psalms. In addition to facilitating the study of Scripture, we want to deepen the community of believers, so we facilitate some fun, too! The groups have periodic fellowships where we pull out the good snacks and learn more pieces of each other’s stories and laugh a lot. We’ve also been known to cry together and drop everything and pray as we bear each other’s burdens. We are putting legs on the phrase “walk through life together.” Sign-ups will open this week; be sure to watch your email.

Join us. Come study Scripture with your sisters. Discover afresh where you can hang your hope.

Grace, Martha Brooks